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Article: R.S. Gwynn: a southern melancholic.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Hollins Critic
- Article date:
- February 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 The Hollins Critic. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In his The Anatomy of Melancholy (1628), Robert Burton says that in order to avoid melancholy--the old word for depression--one "may apply his mind ... to Heraldry, Antiquity, invent Impresses, Emblems; make Epithalamiums, Epitaphs, Elegies, Epigrams, Palindromes, Anagrams, Chronograms, Acrosticks upon his friends' names; or write a comment on Martianus Capella, Tertullian's Cloak, the Nubian Geography, or upon AElia Laelia Crispis, as many idle fellows have assayed; and rather than do nothing, vary a verse a thousand ways with Putean, so torturing his wits, or as Rainnarius of Luneberg, 2,150 times in his Proteus Poeticus, or Scaliger, Chrysolithus, Cleppisius, and ...